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mfd101

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Posts posted by mfd101

  1. 1 hour ago, bristolboy said:

    Interesting article in the Financial Times about how Japan is not eager to give the UK the same deal as it gave the EU. Japan is the UK's 4th largest trading partner after the EU-EFTA, USA, and China.  Remember how Brexiters promised that such a deal would be easy to negotiate since all that would have to be done is copy the EU-Japan agreement? 

     

    Japan trade accord becomes post-Brexit priority for UK

    The UK is to make a trade deal with Japan one of its top priorities after Brexit, putting it on a par with the need to achieve similar pacts with the EU and US.

    Until now, the UK’s principal post-Brexit trade goal in talks with the Japanese government has been to “roll over” the existing trade relationship which Britain enjoys with Japan as a member of the EU.

    However, Japan has long resisted this “copy-and-paste” approach, believing it can secure far better trade terms from the UK than it did in negotiations with the much larger EU when it secured a bilateral Japan-EU trade treaty.


    https://www.ft.com/content/b6a047c6-dafc-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17

     

    If you want to read the whole article just copy the title and paste into google search. The ft.com link that appears will let you legitimately bypass the firewall.

    Sensible people, the Japanese.

  2. 9 minutes ago, Damrongsak said:

    I just keep thinking about telling time from a digital clock vs. an analog clock.  With the latter, I can immediately know the approximate time and even judge how much time I have left for something.  Not much thought required, just pattern recognition of a sort.  Could this be related to individual word recognition or perhaps ideograms or whatever? 

    No. Just what you're used to. Your analog pattern goes back to early childhood. Your digital is much more recent.

  3. I had an interesting experience about 3 years ago when I gave a Thai novel to our (then) 12-year-old niece. I had read the novel in English - a famous one from the 1950s set in early C20th Bangkok - and enjoyed it so thought (perhaps a bit prematurely) that I could give her the Thai original to read, the only book in a book-free illiterate peasant family.

     

    The effect was startling. She was commanded by her elders & my b/f her uncle to sit at the end of the table where I was sitting with my laptop and read the book. So she interprets this to mean that it's a test of her reading-aloud ability and sits there reading out the words in singsong fashion. I don't know if the words were separated or all strung together on the page, but clearly this reasonably intelligent near-adolescent girl had no idea of reading a book quietly for pleasure ... So much for the village education system!

     

    Book never seen again.

    • Like 2
  4. (1) Obviously a fruitcake.

     

    (2) The Canadian people have of course done it to themselves. Will be interesting to see their judgment on themselves at the next national election.

     

    (3) All people everywhere are 'racist', which is to say suspicious of foreigners particularly those who look different and talk funny. Just ask a dark-skinned Khmer like my b/f dealing with pale skinned Central Thais. Or try reading the 'seeking husband' columns in the Indian newspapers. Only pink people are supposed to feel bad about their perfectly normal identity feelings.

    • Like 2
  5. 3 hours ago, samran said:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/18/britain-will-aim-for-freedom-of-movement-deal-with-australia?CMP=soc_567

     

     

    so the brexiters bang on about controlling their borders but the reality is that they are out shopping new free movement trade deals. 

    God help us! At least the Chinese, Vietnamese & Indian migrants contribute mightily to the Oz economy ...

  6. 3 minutes ago, bristolboy said:

    The Centerpiece of 21st Century Global Security

     

    Since the first F-35 Lightning II rolled out of the Lockheed Martin factory in Fort Worth, Texas in 2006, the program’s reach has exponentially expanded around the globe.

    Of the original nine partner countries –  Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States – six have received their first jets. There are also three foreign military sale (FMS) customers - Israel, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

    https://www.f35.com/global

    And the codes for all the software are given to all those countries, are they? I don't think so.

    • Haha 1
  7. 10 minutes ago, bendejo said:

    Perhaps they are not supposed to work well.  *wink*

     

    No superpower sells Model A of Weapon 101 to anyone. Model A is reserved for the superpower alone. Close allies get Model B. Other allies get Model C. The international market gets Model D or E or surplus-to-requirements depending on assessment of need, friendliness, reliability and competence. Saudis probably get Model D ...

    • Like 1
  8. 3 hours ago, Moonlover said:

    Had you taken the trouble to read up on issues pertaining to the silting up of reservoirs, which is an international problem, you might just have resisted the urge to type this cheap and unnecessary Thai bash.

     

    https://www.internationalrivers.org/sedimentation-problems-with-dams

    It makes a pretty gloomy read! And no suggestion of anything anyone can do about it other than plant trees to stop soil erosion.

     

    What about dredging? Is that not a possibility in many cases? Obviously would need to be a permanent activity in cases where silting up is rapid ...

     

    I still find it hard to believe that, across all of Thailand's dams, a ratio of 40 capacity to 17 usable is normal.

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